High Stakes and Antes in State Races

By KEVIN SACK

Published: September 6, 1998

Correction Appended

RALEIGH, N.C., Sept. 2—
Not so long ago, State Senator Edward N. Warren ran for re-election every two years by handing out combs. Thousands of combs. Thousands of green combs (because Mr. Warren is from Greenville) with his name embossed in white type.

''I'd go out to the restaurants where the farmers go for breakfast, like Tom's in Greenville and Bum's in Ayden, and I'd pass out my combs,'' said Mr. Warren, a 68-year-old former high school principal who has served in North Carolina's Legislature for 18 years. ''I'd always just tell people that I don't have any hair, so I have no need for them.''

Mr. Warren, a Democrat, still hands out combs. But in the past four years, he has also become conversant in the modern politics of television advertising buys, polling cross-tabulations and targeted direct mail. While he once spent no more than $30,000 to hold on to his Senate seat, his 1996 campaign cost $210,000. This year, he may have to spend more.

''It's just out of control,'' Mr. Warren said. ''I never thought I'd see it in my career, but that's the real world in North Carolina these days.''

In fact, it has become the real world for lawmakers in virtually every statehouse in the 1990's. With control of legislatures at risk in a remarkable number of states, and with states inheriting vast new responsibilities from Washington, the once quaint business of legislative politics has become intensely competitive, sophisticated and costly.

After decades of hidebound, one-party domination, nearly a third of all legislative chambers are now within theoretical striking distance of a switch in partisan control. In several chambers, like the Michigan House of Representatives, the California Assembly and the Wisconsin Senate, control has changed multiple times in the last six years. To be sure, some states have long had closely contested and relatively expensive legislative elections, but now even the once-solid South, where the state legislatures were the last bastion of Democratic control, is in play.

This new competitiveness, driven largely by Republican inroads in this decade, has led to a sea change in the tactics of legislative campaigning, said dozens of lawmakers, political consultants and authorities on state government interviewed this week.

Television advertising was once considered absurdly inefficient in legislative races because media markets are typically far larger than districts. But it is now commonplace, and not just on cable. Legislative leaders make extensive use of polling to determine how to allocate their party caucuses' financial resources. Partisan messages and policy positions are formulated with the help of focus groups.

With states playing a crucial role in welfare, education, taxation and criminal justice, the national political parties are placing renewed emphasis on legislative campaigns, and so are interest groups. And the political stakes are only rising, because the elections in 1998 and 2000 will determine which parties control the redistricting process after the next census. All of that has led to skyrocketing costs -- and a need for ever-greater fund-raising.

''Targeted races are running two to three times what they cost in the early 90's,'' said Kevin R. Mack, director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. ''It's almost a Congressionalization of state legislative campaigns.''

In California two years ago, two Assemblymen, Rusty Areias and Bruce McPherson, spent a combined $3.49 million in trying to move up to the State Senate, a race won by Mr. McPherson, a Republican. Total spending on legislative races in that state increased to $105 million in 1995-96 from $15 million in 1975-76, the Secretary of State reported.

North Carolina's recent experience demonstrates that campaign inflation is not limited to large states with high advertising rates. As the General Assembly here has become a partisan battleground, with the Republicans gaining a slim majority in the House of Representatives in 1994, the cost of campaigning has soared.

In 1996, candidates from the two major parties in North Carolina spent a total of $13.6 million on their campaigns, according to a study by Thad Beyle, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After accounting for inflation, that was an increase of 81 percent over the amount spent in 1994, and an increase of 172 percent over 1992, Mr. Beyle reported.

The main reason for the increase in spending is that legislative politics have destabilized in the 1990's after decades of calm.

From 1972 to 1994, Democrats were as prevalent in state legislatures as plaid sport coats. They controlled the majority of statehouses and exerted little effort in maintaining their power. They were particularly dominant in the South in those years, a period when Democrats controlled every legislative chamber and never held fewer than 71 percent of the region's legislative seats, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In North Carolina, the Democratic campaign strategy consisted of little more than ''hearing at the grocery store that Senator Joe was in trouble and sending him $500,'' said Senator Roy A. Cooper, the Democratic majority leader. But in 1994, as Republicans took control of Congress, they also asserted themselves on the state level. Republicans entered that election with control of 8 legislatures and emerged with 19, while the Democrats were left with 18. Twelve legislatures were divided with each party controlling one chamber.

Correction: September 9, 1998, Wednesday An article on Sunday about the increasing cost and competitiveness of state legislative elections misstated the party control of the Virginia Legislature. Republicans do not control both chambers; they control the Senate, and Democrats hold a narrow margin in the House of Delegates. There are 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and 1 independent in that body, and the Speaker is a Democrat.